Faculty of Fashion & Design, SGT University
Clothing is something which we used to worn on our body. It is the basic necessity of life which performs a variety of social as well as cultural functions. Clothing may also function as adornment and an expression of personal taste or style. But apart from this the most important among all is the functional aspect of clothing i.e. it will serve a specific function. In this case, the clothing requirements for limited vision people.
According to a study published online by the Lancet Global Health Journal on 2 August 2015,there are 8.8 million people in India who were found to be blind and 47.7 million people had moderate and severe vision impairment.It’s difficult for a person with complete five senses to pick the right clothes. Then, one can imagine it’s really hard for a limited or no vision individuals who can’t see the colours to match the different clothing.
Therefore, definitely matching the clothes for limited vision people is a big challenging task. So, India is having a large mass of people suffering from limited or no vision which are left behind in the field of fashion. So, it is our duty to take this mass along with others by offering them wide number of clothing choices by keeping in mind their requirements and the difficulties which they face in day to day life.
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Consequently, I suggest some important considerations for clothing which serves the purposes of limited or no vision persons.
Design Details–The most important point to consider is to choose simple designs that do not use a lot of extra fabric. It is suggested to avoid belts and other ornamental details that might get trapped on various things and thus might be an accidental threat to limited vision people. Take away cuffs from pants and make sure that bottom wear like pants, long skirts and night-dresses are short in length to prevent trapping against various things which comes in the passage while working for day to day activities.
Safety-safety is the most important concern for low vision individuals so, the preferable fabrics are closely woven such as knitted fabrics specially with low nap surfaces and avoid using loose and loopy textured fabrics. Night-dresses should be made of flame-resistant fabrics. For outerwear, pickbright colors that can be seen or noticed from a distance. For example, bright yellow is aparticularly good choice for the reason that it is readily noticeable. Strips of reflector tape will be helpful and can be applied to some clothes so that they could be easily identifiable. Non-slip shoes or slippers are advisable to prevent from slippage for which they are truly unaware.
Coordination of Garments– this is a serious and very obvious concern for limited or no vision i.e. to identify the colors of dissimilar garments and coalescing them into a costume. To some level this problem can be rectify for low vision by using the strong value contrasts between the different pieces of complete garment. So, that they could be able to identify the clothing. Now, for No vision fabrics with different textures can be used so that by using their sense of touch they can easily identify the separates. By using Braille, designers can incorporate the French knots for different alphabets such as in one separate Y alphabet is prepared using French knots and in other B is engraved which denotes Y- Yellow and B- Black. In this way we as a designer can make their life easy.
Clothing Cleanliness -Another major problem which can be arises for the low or no vision person’s incapabilityis to see spots, stains as well as general soil that amasses on garments. To overcome this issue, I recommend to use the fabrics which can be able to wash and dried easily along the property of wrinkle resistance because for low vision persons it is difficult to maintain the fabrics with lot of wrinkles and get it ironed daily. If any clothing requires dry-cleaning then it should be mention with the help of braille (French knots) as explained above. To get rid of soiling and wrinkles problems, it’s important to use dark colored fabrics so that the stains will not be identifiable to others and textured fabrics can be used instead of plain and light colored fabrics.
So, in the end by compiling my article I can suggest the young and budding designers to please had a vision on these untouched sections of our society so that these low or no vision individuals can also enjoy the immense wealth given by the fashion designers in the form of functional clothing which in return makes the life of these people’s easy and enjoyable by not wasting time in picking the clothes every day.
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